Amit's Blog

Wealth Buys Biodiversity and Poverty Mines the Seabed The Aral Sea is not one story but two: a northern revival and a southern surrender. Kazakhstan's Kokaral Dam—13 kilometers of concrete and political will—has slashed salinity from 30g/L to 8g/L, resurrected 22 native fish species, and boosted annual catches from zero to 8,000 tons. Water levels rose 12 meters; 600 km² of toxic seabed is now water. Yet just south of the dam, Uzbekistan drills for gas on a dried basin where the Amu Darya rarely flows. With GDP per capita at $14,155 versus $3,162, Kazakhstan can afford ecological restoration; Uzbekistan cannot. While Astana invests in AI-driven water governance and targets a 44-meter sea level by 2029, Tashkent prioritizes textile exports worth $3.3 billion and employs 650,000 workers. The Aral proves a brutal truth: environmental recovery is a luxury good. As climate finance debates stall, the basin asks—can a sea be saved if its people are still hungry? The Crime Scene: Dat...

Challenging the Dominant Lens on Strongman Rule and Revealing the Enduring Role of Colonial Legacies in Shaping Modern Geopolitics In an age marked by the return of multipolar tensions and the persistence of authoritarian governance across much of the world, Stephen Kotkin’s influential thesis on the “weakness of the strongman” has become a cornerstone of Western political analysis. Kotkin argues that regimes led by singular, unaccountable leaders inevitably contain the seeds of their own destruction through a series of interlocking internal pathologies: distorted information flows, perpetual succession crises, deliberate institutional hollowing, negative elite selection, and a fundamental absence of mechanisms for self-correction. This framework, echoed and amplified by prominent liberal thinkers, portrays authoritarianism not as a robust alternative but as a high-risk gamble destined for catastrophic failure once external shocks arrive. The narrative resonates deeply in policy circ...

Modern Imperialism, also known as Neocolonialism   Neocolonialism is the indirect perpetuation of colonial-like dominance by powerful nations and corporations over developing countries, using economic, political, and cultural tools to maintain dependency without formal rule. Coined by Kwame Nkrumah, it manifests through debt traps, unfair trade, political interference, and cultural hegemony, as seen in U.S. exploitation of Haiti and Guatemala, UK dominance in Nigeria and Kenya, and France’s control over Niger and Côte d'Ivoire. Resources are extracted via corporate dominance, land grabs, and labor exploitation, causing environmental and social harm. Countries like China, Cuba, and Bolivia resist through state-led policies, though challenges persist. Russia and India also engage in neocolonial practices in the Central African Republic and Bhutan. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and African nations raises neocolonial concerns due to debt, but its no...